The Postal Service will soon let marketers send mail of many shapes and sizes--no envelope needed--thanks to a suburban promotions firm

All of them are two-dimensional mailings bearing a pitch from some advertiser, of course, but in colors and shapes that will, without doubt, stand out from the clutter of boring rectangular mail consumers now receive.

Science marches on, even in the field of junk mail.

A Chicago-area company, Imageworks Manufacturing Inc. in south suburban Park Forest, is about to launch a high-profile new product that company officials are calling the shape of things to come for the direct-marketing industry.

The product, which is only feasible under new postal rules effective Aug. 10, aims to end-run shape limitations that have long frustrated direct-mailers inclined to mail their ads in more eye-catching ways.

To ensure their high-volume mail-handling machinery doesn't get clogged by unusually shaped letters or postcards, the U.S. Postal Service had, until now, required mass mailers to use standard-size rectangular envelopes.

For packages, that rule didn't apply. As a result, "You could send a coconut through the mail if you put stamps on it," says Imageworks president Tom Becker, "but you couldn't send a cutout picture of a coconut unless you put it inside an envelope."

These rules frustrated Becker, who petitioned the U.S. Postal Service for more than two years before it recognized a new classification of direct mail. The decision gives marketers, who soon will have one avenue of access curbed by the federal no-call list, options beyond a rectangular envelope or postcard.

Imageworks' ShipShapes brand promises to let advertisers send consumers advertising postcards featuring plasticized, cut-out designs not just of coconuts but of motorcycles, bulldogs, champagne bottles, even banana peels. And because ShipShapes can be sent with no envelope, an advertiser's message stands a better chance of getting read, Becker says.

In tests, the new mailing format has generated a response rate five times greater than the rate generated by conventional junk mail, the executive says.

To get ShipShapes off the ground, Becker had to dream up a way around the post office's prohibition on non-conforming shapes. His solution? A new classification of mail known as Customized MarketMail. CMM avoids the mechanical sorters by being "drop-shipped" to local post offices. A package containing a bundle of the advertising shapes is sent through the mail to individual post offices, then opened by postal workers and distributed by hand.

By sending the product to individual post offices, where mail is handled manually, "We'll bypass all the automated sorting equipment," Becker says.

ShipShapes can be up to three-quarters of an inch thick, although most are the thickness of posterboard. Printed on a proprietary plasticized base, they're flexible enough to fit into any mailbox and spring back to their original shape. They're also detailed and glossy enough to decorate a refrigerator, and Becker says ShipShapes can be produced with magnets on the back if advertisers want.

But at a per-unit, delivered price in the $1 to $3 range, they're not cheap. "They're mainly for your A- or B-list clients, your best prospects," says Becker.

"If you send out junk mail, it says something about your company," he adds. "If you send out these, it says something else."

Working with postal regulators to get the new mail classification approved was slow initially, Becker says, "but once we got the idea in the right hands it moved quickly. In June, the Postal Rate Commission approved the concept, and in mid-July the Board of Governors signed off on the concept."

The new products promise to generate significant growth for Imageworks, a 55-person firm that makes printed promotional products, nameplate overlays and point-of-purchase signage.

For now, ShipShapes is the only firm that makes a CMM product, and Postal Service employees are learning how to handle the items using prototype mailers produced by Imageworks. The first mailing is set for Aug. 10, when client Krispy Kreme will launch a campaign in the Los Angeles area featuring doughnut-shaped ads.